For our GMC Truck build there were a number of pats that had to be painted as metal, like steel or aluminum. Now a number of paint lines come with a color approximating the different metal colors but I wanted to try out something more advanced with the Vallejo Metal Color line (http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/en_US/metal-color/family/33). I hit up my favorite seller of Vallejo paints and picked up some basic aluminum (they have a number of different aluminum colors), steel, and chrome. I didn’t want to test these out directly on a kit so I got a couple scraps of styrene and Luke and I head out to the garage.
First step was primer, you can put the Metal Colors directly on your surface but the line has a black gloss primer that is supposed to make the colors pop so that was the next step.
After that I decided to label the back so I wouldn’t forget which color is which (A for aluminum, C for Chrome, S for steel)
Next step was painting and then a gloss varnish from the metal color line. This is also why I wanted to test it on a throw away material in that things didn’t go terribly well. It took a little bit to get the airbrush dialed in properly and happy for spraying so the paint job wasn’t top notch but it for the most part it answered the question of how it looks.
I’m sold on the steel (center) and aluminum (right) but something went wrong with the Chrome (left) over primer, not sure what exactly happened maybe it needs more coats. I will also say my phone camera doesn’t really pick up the steal color very well.
Newman's Model Building 